Thoughts from the Russian Federation

[David Horn]

(11-27-2019, 02:46 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: Do you consider the post WWII high in the US to have had a police state?  Truman and Eisenhower were reactives, after all.

I wouldn't call the US of the period entirely a police state, but it was certainly less free than the US of the rest of the 20th century.  Perhaps highs just generally tend toward authoritarianism.

I think that yes, the last 1T had some dark aspects that were clearly government related.  But unlike today, the 1T Congress was highly active, so whacknuts like Joe McCarthy in the Senate and HUAC in the House were the most draconian and overbearing.  I would credit both Truman and Ike with keeping both in check, though both were still able to destroy the lives of putatively innocent people.